


Suits

by jackmarlowe



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-06 23:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackmarlowe/pseuds/jackmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie Newendyke over the course of a year, from joining the force to being Orange. Non-linear bits and bobs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Coat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not too much of this has a plot - it's more been a gradual character study. If you'd like to read it in chronological order in the film-verse, though (and most of it doesn't take place during the events of Reservoir Dogs), it goes 3, 1, 2 thus far.

This is Orange:

He is the kid who stole his mom’s car when he was fifteen and drove wild through every traffic light on Long Beach and didn’t get caught. Orange is a lucky motherfucker, if he had a mom in the first place. Most likely he didn’t. Holdaway whacked it into his skull that he needed every goddamn detail down to what his uncle’s stepson ate for breakfast Thursday morning but he didn’t really go for that method bullshit.

Orange is better simply to know by instinct. He feels different under the skin, now, pulling the jacket over his squared shoulders and looking himself up-down fresh out of bed. In the dark morning mirror, his silhouette tilts his head like a cautious rooster. Fret and peck. Stand and stare blue eyes and glasses on, a bad son of a bitch. There he is.

When Freddie was young, he lived in the projects and no one called him anything but Ginger even though he wasn’t. Pretty fucking ironic now. Pretty funny – Freddie fucking Newendyke. Useless piece of scrawny shit until puberty dropped out of the sky, ka-blam, and even then he was flat-out unavoidable kinds of weird. He read comic books underneath the playground slide and grew up shoving them bashful in the bottom of his locker so the girls who didn’t look at him anyway wouldn’t see all through high school. October of senior year, he ran out of room for books and had to lose half the X-Men to orange juice and rotten meatloaf in the janitor’s trashcan between periods.

Growing up, Freddie’s neighbourhood had its share of bad kids – not potheads, motherfuckers, fifteen-year-olds with tats and flick-knives in their back pockets who even the teachers didn’t dare cross – but he never came close to being one of them. In his head, Freddie told himself walking home late from school, checking over his shoulder, he was Spiderman, but really he was always Peter fucking Parker and he always always knew it dull in the pit of his stomach.

Orange is not Spiderman or Professor X. He is fucking Baretta and he is a grown-up, which, Freddie thinks, sliding his hands over the coat’s leather turning in the kitchen of his little apartment, is a word he wouldn’t necessarily apply to himself.

‘Mother _fucker_.’

The word is good coming out of Orange’s mouth – he sounds like he means it. He is not flailing with skinny white arms in the rain running down a Long Beach hill drunk and bloody-mouthed but standing still in Freddie’s kitchen, breathing slow. Freddie runs his hand through his shaggy blonde hair and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. The back of his throat tastes faintly of vomit where, last night, Orange had too many shots of tequila and ended up spewing his guts in a gutter on scraped hands and knees, White’s hand on the back of his head as he retched and retched and didn’t fucking care, what’s a little sick? He scrunches up his face, sticks his tongue out at himself in the dirty window reflection, pops the leather collar of the coat and looks fucking cool. Healthy start to a healthy day.

This is Freddie Newendyke: he can’t even make a fucking cup of coffee with the coat off his back, these days.


	2. Burritos & Pancakes

White orders a breakfast burrito and Orange a stack of pancakes and they sit, unbothered and close-shouldered, in the window booth. It’s early and the sky a bright, painful morning blue that hums through the old Sixties blinds. It sears Orange’s eyelids just so, bang bang.  
  
White smears Tabasco over tortilla with a stained knife and notes his frown with a half-tilt of his head. ‘You hangin’ that bad, huh?’

  
‘Nah.’

  
He laughs softly, _huh huh huh_ , a hoarse helpless chuckle. ‘You’re a bad, bad fucking liar, kid, you know that?’

  
Orange smirks into the edge of his own knife as he digs into his pancakes. White ain’t a bad guy – older, much. It’s a tad disconcerting. His brow furrows into itself as he chews, defiant old worry, and the corners of his mouth turn down. But he ain’t a bad guy. A bad motherfucker, maybe – yes. Often, Orange’ll glance sideways at him and he’ll be gazing calmly back like he’s expecting it, like he knows, doesn’t give a damn.

  
But now they sit across from each other and eat. White takes the burrito systematically, cutting it into squares that ooze even amounts of green refrigerator peppers and extra sour sauce. He knows how to use a knife and fork properly – Orange doesn’t exactly, but he can tell by the way White puts them down. The fan above their booth buzzes uselessly.

  
‘Coffee?’ The waitress has big tits and a disinterested pout, injected shiny red lips on a rouged-up moonish face. She’s Orange’s age – twenty eight, twenty nine – and wears a tight-belted apron that reads _Best Service For Seven Blocks_ _At Least_ stitched in red.

  
White orders himself a cup, black, and orange juice for his friend before Orange can blink or argue. She goes and he splutters, tilting his head imploringly, but White just grins his Rottweiler smile, brown dog eyes crinkling with amusement.

  
‘Excuse me for taking the fucking liberty, Mr. Tropicana, ha ha _ha_ , keep your pants on – you’ll feel better in no time, trust me.’

  
Driving with White one-handed behind the wheel, he does, funnily enough. Joe wants them civil – well, Orange thinks with an arm out the window, leaning out with the hot boulevard wind going by at top speed, this pretty much qualifies, doesn’t it? Probably this is more than civil. White wears thick sunglasses when he drives and Orange jokes that he looks like a grandpa, so they switch, knock-off aviators for the pilot’s seat and a leering blonde kid in his dad’s too-big glasses.

  
White gets down to asking him questions as they drive aimlessly, killing four hours and a tank of gas. They literally have nothing better to do. Orange sits back and enjoys listening to him talk as the compressed humidity sticks his thin white T-shirt to the leather upholstery. He can close his eyes with these glasses on; he doesn’t need to see, but follows the street layout with the smooth assured turn of the wheel.

  
‘What kinda music do you like?’

  
‘You watch baseball at all?’

  
‘What’s playing at the movies these days – let’s go take a look, shall we?’ _  
  
If Orange ever had a dad_ , he thinks – but as they brake around a turn towards the silver Cineplex shimmering in the nine AM heatwave, his gut jitters uneasily and the pancakes are suddenly in jeopardy. That’s not quite right. That’s also not quite safe, and the hangover makes it impossible to say which is worse.


	3. Marlboro Reds

He can feel Holdaway’s eyes on him through the open door to the freezer – his hand goes too slowly for a Coke bottle and he’s watching, watching, slicing his protégé to rags with critical glares for each little move. There, and there. He steps carefully.

Freddie gets to the counter, gives the guy his best winning smile – smile don’t smirk, wipe that motherfucking look of yo’ face, don’t bare those teeth at me, man, you got fangs like a kid on Halloween – and leans in.  
  
‘Can I get a twelve-pack of Marlboro Reds, please?’  
  
The old man raises a bored white eyebrow. ‘Let’s see some ID.’

Immediately, this is not going as planned. ‘I, uh, left it in the car – look, I’m twenty-nine, okay? I was born in ’63.’  
  
He leans across the counter too, blue-veined forearms holding him upright as he fixes Freddie with a _look_. ‘At least you can do the math,’ he acknowledged tiredly. ‘Most drop-outs I get in here can’t tell you what four and forty make, or the time of day.’  
  
Freddie fidgets with the cuff of his borrowed shirt and exhales, shifting his weight from toes to toes. Holdaway is bigger than him, broader in the shoulders and chest, and inexplicably owns a fancy white collared number that says a big fat _no way_ when it looks at the rest of him.  
  
His boss has this kind of crazy, kind of infuriatingly true theory that Freddie looks ten years younger when he’s dressed up nice _._ This so-called one-on-one training exercise is now a sadistic experiment as such – _let’s put on your baby face and go for a Sunday walk._ Mo-ther-fucker, and he’s still watching, pretending to be interested in lottery tickets now. Okay, okay. Up the odds, yeah yeah yeah-  
  
‘Look, man, I promise you, I’m a good decade over eighteen – I can tell you who won the Super Bowl ten years ago, would that help?'  
  
This is his big hand, his oh-yeah-motherfucker-you-thought-you-were-winning-well-check-this-shit ka-blam. Freddie’s pretty fucking proud of it for approximately a second (and Holdaway better fucking be listening) before the guy shakes his head, a smile quivering and quirking at the corners of his lips. ‘If you tell me the 1982 World Series winner, then we’re talking.’  
  
 _Shit_. ‘I…don’t like baseball,’ he confesses, kicking out beneath the counter.  
  
‘No?’ His wrinkled hands do a slow, deliberate oh-well twirl over themselves. ‘Too bad, kid. Bring valid ID next time and we’ll see. State law.’  
  
‘But-’  
  
‘Out, before I get your details and report you.’  
  
The gas station guy says like there’s a little laugh behind his bark, but the words bang in his ears as Freddie walks out fuming into the Los Angeles heat. After a minute, Holdaway follows him out with an armful of chips and two Cokes, hands him one, and jerks a stern hand-signal that in his Nam days probably meant _follow_.  
  
They head down the overheated boulevard, cars hissing by.  
  
‘What did you do wrong?’  
  
Freddie squints up at the sun. Man. Truth be told it was dumb dumb _dumb_ to begin with and yeah maybe it is a little weird that all scrawny narrow-chested pasty-faced five foot seven of him only looks his age in a Batman T-shirt, but what cop needs to care? He gets enough laughs on the force as-is – he doesn’t know Holdaway well enough yet to snap, but he can get away with attitude, maybe. He's fucking entitled.  
  
‘Can you explain to me what the fuck that was about, seriously? What was the point?’  
  
The corners of his dark eyes crinkle as he swigs his Coke. ‘What, did he make you _mad?_ Motherfucka’s just doin’ his job, it ain’t my fault he got suspicious-’  
  
‘And I really am twenty-nine years old, man. I don’t need to be constantly reminded that I look twelve or something-’  
  
‘You don't look _twelve_ , man. Definitely over the age of consent.'  
  
They stop at an overpass, Holdaway putting a casual hand up and glancing down at the onrush of metal. Sweat tracks tangibly down Freddie’s back as he shoves his hands into his pockets – he’ll have to wash the shirt tonight, maybe get it dry-cleaned or some shit, it being the boss’s and all. That suddenly pisses him off.  
  
‘Look,’ Holdaway says carefully, one finger jabbing the chain-link fence, his broad forehead smoothing away traces of amusement. ‘If I told you to go back right now wearing that dumb shit you put on every day, he’d probably sell you the weed the other guy keeps under the counter. Now you gotta tell me what’s so different about those two situations. What separates the failure to purchase cigarettes from successfully advancing your risk level for lung cancer?’  
  
‘It’s, uh, just a dumb shirt.’  
  
‘And you are one _dumb_ little white boy if you think that fine hand-tailored shirt doesn’t change the whole fucking situation. Do you read me?’  
  
Freddie tilts his head back and bites his lip, dragging it through his teeth so it hurts and makes a disparaging _fuh_ sound when he lets go a breath. ‘Ah, nope.’ He’s suddenly trying not to laugh. _Do you read me_ – okay, man.  
  
The boss snorts and caps his Coke. ‘Amuse me and postulate before yo’ ass fails this part of the course.’  
  
Despite himself, Freddie feels a small stirring of panic. It’s not clear how real or serious this is yet, but he’s not stupid – the other guys on the force take Holdaway seriously, therefore there’s obviously something more to this, something he’s not being told just yet. Okay. _Okay_. Focus, cut the smartass shit-talk and be a grown-up for five seconds:  
  
‘The shirt makes me look younger – because it’s too big on me. And something went wrong, like you said, that something being that I couldn’t talk my way out of getting ID’d. Because…I wasn’t paying attention to how I looked, or how I was acting.’  
  
Holdaway bobs his head and rocks back on his heels, squinting in the bright sunlight. ‘So?’  
  
‘So…you’re trying to tell me something here, yeah?’  
  
‘And what would that be?’  
  
‘You want me to work undercover, right?’  
  
Holdaway blinks slowly and tilts his head. After a moment, he very deliberately tears open a bag of chips and crunches on, chewing delicately before speaking.  
  
‘This was a character study. This was an acting job – see how you move different in something else, see how other people treat you. Think of this as an audition.’  
  
‘So, what, do I pass?’ He glances down at his feet and doesn’t know if he wants to hear.  
  
‘Well, you ain’t James fuckin' Dean.’ Holdaway shrugs his big shoulders beneath his Hendrix shirt and nods for them to move on, munching on barbecue chips as he ambles. ‘But I guess you already spoiled the surprise, so we’re gonna have to fix that pretty soon. Let’s go. Quick march.’


End file.
